Computor Companion Logo BBBOnLine Reliability Seal
Computing at Home

Simple Quizzes in PowerPoint

by Geetesh BajajProtected by Copyscape. Do not copy.

Creating a quiz in PowerPoint can be fun. You can use your quiz after a business presentation as an excuse to give away gifts to those who provide the right answers. Or you can use it to create a basic quiz for a child in elementary school. Whatever your aim, creating a quiz in any recent version of PowerPoint (PowerPoint 97 or newer) is fairly easy and intuitive.

In this tutorial, I teach you how to create a quiz with multiple answer choices. You can create quizzes with more features using VBA programming within PowerPoint or with the Custom Shows feature. But this technique is a good way to get started. First, you need to come up with a few questions. Five questions is a good number to start. Be sure to come up with questions that can have only one correct answer.

Each question requires three slides. You need the question slide and the correct and incorrect slides for each question. I also used five pictures. To add visual contnet and relevance to the quiz I used one picture for each question. In this sample, the visuals actually were part of the presentation. All of the pictures are from Hemera's Photo-Objects collection.

To create your quiz, follow these steps:

Start PowerPoint and create a new Blank presentation. Insert a new slide with the Title Only layout.

Type in your question in the Title placeholder and add the picture to the slide using the Insert | Picture | From File… option.

Now add three or more text-boxes beneath the picture and type in the answers. Only one of the answers needs to be correct. Format the text boxes with fills if required.

Create two more slides and for the correct and incorrect answers. I mentioned the correct answer on the "correct" slide and suggested users go back to the question slide again and make another choice once they get to the "incorrect" slide.(see screenshot)

Now go back to the question slide and select the text box that contains the correct answer – be careful to select the text box and not the text itself. Right-click and choose the Action Settings option.

In the "Mouse Click" tab of the Action Settings dialog box, activate the drop down box in the "Hyperlink to" area and choose the "Slide…" option.

In the resultant dialog box, choose to hyperlink to the "correct" answer slide.

In the same way, hyperlink the text boxes with the wrong answers to the "incorrect" answer slide. Create four similar sets of three slides each with the four remaining questions. On all the "incorrect" answer slides, provide a link back to the actual question slide so that users can attempt to answer the question again. On all the "correct" answer slides, provide a link to the next question.

If you want to see how I did it, you can download the finished presentation from:

http://www.indezine.com/bank/counting.html

More Ideas

Try to include some sounds within the Action Settings dialog box. For the right answer, I used the "Applause" sound. Similarly, for the wrong answer, I opted to use the "Whoosh" sound. These sounds are part of PowerPoint, but there's no reason why you cannot use your own sounds in the same way.

Consider placing a check next to the "Highlight click" option in the Action Settings dialog box. The highlight option inverts the colors used within the text box while clicking on an answer option.

Have fun experimenting with more more options. For example, you could try changing the fonts, pictures, or sounds to make the quiz more interesting.

Like the articles in Computor Companion? Check out our computer tips books!

logical tips

Logical Tips for Mastering Your Computer:
Quick Shortcuts, Tips, Tricks, and Techniques to Help You Use Your Computer More Effectively

Go from Computing Newbie to Power User!

Read about this book on Amazon
logical tips internet

Logical Tips for Mastering the Internet:
Quick Shortcuts, Tips, Tricks, and Techniques to Help You Use the Internet More Effectively

Go from Internet Newbie to Expert!

Read about this book on Amazon
logical tips office

Logical Tips for Mastering Microsoft Office:
Quick Shortcuts, Tips, Tricks, and Techniques to Help You Use Microsoft Office More Effectively

Don't Let Microsoft Office Drive You Crazy!

Read about this book on Amazon
logical tips office

Logical Tips for Mastering Microsoft Windows:
Quick Shortcuts, Tips, Tricks, and Techniques to Help You Use Microsoft Windows More Effectively

Combat Windows Weirdness!

Read about this book on Amazon

Did you like this article? Let us know!
Please click here to send feedback on this article.
NOTE: If you have computer-related questions, you must post them on our forum.
We do not answer computer questions via email.

Don't Miss Our Weekly Publishize Newsletter!
Learn how to create books, web sites, and info products
Email
Name


Check Out
Our Books!



This site powered by the Logical Web Publisher (TM): Fast, easy, and affordable content management